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HOPE FADING AS MILITARY STAMPS OUT PROTESTS, COMMUNICATIONS

2 October 2007

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Burma's protests against the military junta and declining living standards have escalated from peaceful demonstrations and military warnings to bloody confrontations that have left an unknown number of people dead, including a Japanese journalist, report Mizzima News, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) and Burmese exile-run news sources. Authorities have also cut off the Internet and mobile phones that have played a crucial role in documenting the protests and getting information out of the notoriously closed regime.

Since the junta announced a 60-day dusk until dawn curfew and ban on public gatherings of more than five people on 25 September, security forces have arrested and beaten hundreds of protesters in an attempt to quash the largest uprising since the rebellion by students and monks in 1988, in which more than 3,000 people were killed.

Kenji Nagai, a Japanese photojournalist for the Tokyo-based video and photo agency APF News, was one of 10 people killed during demonstrations in Rangoon last week, according to official reports. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200. Nagai was shot in the chest at point-blank range on 27 September. Two hundred military troops threatened protesters that they must disperse or face "extreme action", after which they used tear gas and opened fire on demonstrators, says Mizzima News.

The tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify how many people are dead, detained or missing. According to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), at least a thousand people have been arrested since protests started against soaring fuel prices on 19 August.

A young, local journalist for "The Voice", Kyaw Kyaw Tun, was reportedly beaten by security police and thrown into a military truck after he took photos of the military facing down protesters at Burma's most famous shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda, Mizzima News reports. He, along with two other Burmese journalists - Nay Lin Aung, who works for the weekly "7 Day News", and an as yet unidentified female journalist employed by "Weekly Eleven News" - have been missing for several days, report RSF and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Min Zaw, the Burmese correspondent of the Japanese daily "Tokyo Shimbun", was arrested at his Rangoon home on 28 September, say RSF and CPJ.

Troops have also raided monasteries to beat and arrest the monks, including students and young children, who have been leading marches every day since 19 September, according to exile-run Burmese media.

Citizen reporters were at the forefront in informing the world of the protests. But on Friday, the junta cut Internet access in Burma - the main medium that has allowed the world access to images and reports about the violence and political crisis gripping the country, reports SEAPA. Internet cafes have also been closed.

The disruption follows the ban of some popular websites and blogs that were continuously posting news and photos of the protests. The Burmese authorities, who hold a monopoly over telecommunications systems in the country, have also tapped or disconnected the mobile and landline phones of reporters of domestic and foreign media and wire agencies and pro-democracy activists. Foreign journalists have also been refused tourist visas by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok.

According to SEAPA, refugees escaping to neighbouring countries have become one of the few sources of information about the unfolding tragedy. "With Burma isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, the refugees are crucial to providing eyewitness accounts of the latest atrocities the junta is committing against the unarmed civilians," says SEAPA. SEAPA is calling on Burma's neighbours to accommodate the Burmese refugees.

SEAPA, the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, the Alliance of Independent Journalists of Indonesia (AJI), ARTICLE 19 and RSF held a day of solidarity and prayer for the people of Burma on 29 September during an informal Asia-Europe Meeting Seminar on Human Rights. The groups gathered at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and held a moment of silence, followed by a short programme expressing solidarity with the Burmese as well as calling on the junta to exercise restraint.

Meanwhile, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari had talks with Burma's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi over the weekend to discuss how to end the crackdown. Gambari has also reportedly met with the leader of the junta, General Than Shwe. A special session of the UN Human Rights Council today, 2 October, adopted a resolution that "strongly deplores" the violent repression of demonstrations, and urges the authorities to release all political prisoners and ensure unhindered access to the media for the Burmese people. An arms embargo and targeted sanctions were not mentioned.

A petition in support of the peaceful protests to China and the UN Security Council is seeking one million signatures. Sign here: http://tinyurl.com/293qj3

Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly persist, amid the government's failure to contend with the range of rights-abusing laws that have been long used to criminalize free speech and prosecute dissidents.As part of the military's "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims face rampant and systemic human rights violations, the authorities denied independent journalists access to the region since early October.

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

The Broadcasting Law, approved in August, enabled private companies to enter the broadcast market for the first time. However, it maintains presidential control over the broadcasting sector, and the Broadcasting Council it established is susceptible to political interference.

The report surveys the rocky landscape for media and public discourse since the ruling military junta lifted the curtain on the southeast Asian nation in 2012 after five decades of isolation from the modern world.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

There is some skepticism about how much influence Burma's youth movement can assert in terms of political change. Still, activists have benefited from greater access to the Internet, which has brought a new side to the online community after decades of heavy censorship

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

The media landscape in Burma is more open than ever, as President Thein Sein releases imprisoned journalists and abolishes the former censorship regime. But many threats and obstacles to truly unfettered reporting remain, including restrictive laws held over from the previous military regime. The wider government’s commitment to a more open reporting environment is in doubt.

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